Near Death Experiences Teach Love
Near Death Experiences Teach Love. The experiencers find themselves in a brilliant light surrounded by pure unconditional love. The light has substance, caring, acceptance, and compassion for the experiencer.
Above all, I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing. We are here to help each other, to care for each other, to understand, forgive, and serve one another. We are here to have love for every person born on Earth.
I have often wondered why people who have awakened from near-death experiences typically become selfless and merciful and often volunteer to help the needy.
Dannion Brinkley’s Near-Death Experiences
After some searching I found what I believe to be a comprehensive answer to my question from the stories of Dannion Brinkley’s near-death experiences. Brinkley had two near-death experiences. After the first one he discovered, “The simple secret of human goodness is, at the time of the end of life, one will find the love and kindness that one possesses is as much as what you bestowed throughout your life.” How does one find out how much love they bestowed throughout their life? One finds out as a result of a “life review” that one is led through after dying. A lightning strike in 1975 was Brinkley’s first near-death experience. In that experience he was able to review the good and bad things he did in his life from a third person’s point of view.
When Dannion was young he was a well-known villain in the schoolyard. From the fifth to twelfth grade, he was involved in 6,000 fights. Not only did he fight kids who sought fights with him, he also often beat up innocent schoolmates. In the replay of these past events after his death, he entered into each of his victims’ bodies and experienced their pain, fear, and helplessness. The pain was far worse for those innocent schoolmates he had beaten up.
Another episode was when he whipped the family dog with a belt because the dog tore the rug. Not until the time of his death did he realize that the dog’s act was unintentional. The dog felt sorry, and Dannion felt the love the dog had for him.
Another time during the Vietnam War, he felt the North Vietnam Officer’s bewilderedness at the moment of being hit in the head by a bullet that came from Dannion’s gun. Dannion also felt the officer’s sadness of never being able to see his family again. Worst of all, he even felt the lasting pain the officer’s family suffered for years.
Then there was the time he was in a Central American country simply to aid in the delivery of weapons to that country. He returned to the US afterwards, but the guns had been used to kill some innocent people; he felt the pain they experienced at their death. Their sorrow, anxiety and helplessness all entered into his body. From this review Brinkley understood and wrote, “From the life review, I was forced to see the death and destruction in the world I caused. We are all a link in the big chain of humanity. Everything you do affects the other links.”
Yet he was not a completely bad person. Once he saw a farmer beating a goat. The goat ran off to avoid the beating and ended up with its head stuck in the fence, but the farmer continued the brutal beating. Brinkley couldn’t stand it anymore. He stepped out of his car, pulled the farmer away, and punched him. During his life review, he felt the farmer’s shame, and he could feel the goat’s thanks.
After the review Brinkley said happily to the “Light Spirit” that led the review, “My life is going to be more meaningful after seeing this.” But then he suddenly realized that he was dead. For some unknown reason, he was returned to life and has since thoroughly changed his behavior. He has exhausted all his means to help others.
After 14 years he experienced death a second time because of heart failure. In the life review, he felt an old lady’s heartfelt thanks for his kind help during her stay in a hospice. Once he treated a group of female vagrants to a Chinese restaurant, he also felt their gratitude.
[During her life review], I remember one particular incident … when, as a child, I yanked my little sister’s Easter basket away from her, because there was a toy in it that I wanted. Yet in the review, I felt her feelings of disappointment and loss and rejection. What we do to other people when we act unlovingly! … Everything you have done is there in the review for you to evaluate (and) when I was there in that review there was no covering up. I was the very people that I hurt, and I was the very people I helped to feel good…. It is a real challenge, every day of my life, to know that when I die I am going to have to witness every single action of mine again, only this time actually feeling the effects I’ve had on others. It sure makes me stop and think.
Mine was not a review, but a reliving. For me, it was a total reliving of every thought I had ever thought, every word I had ever spoken, and every deed I had ever done; plus, the effect of each thought, word and deed on everyone and anyone who had ever come within my environment or sphere of influence, whether I knew them or not…. No detail was left out. No slip of the tongue or slur was missed. No mistake or accident went unaccounted for. If there is such a thing as hell, as far as I am concerned this was hell.
A lot can be learned from Brinkley’s experience. I like to share it with others with the hope that everyone can grow a beautiful and kind soul and treat all others with kindness. Why do those who have near-death experiences become kinder and more merciful? It is because they suddenly see some truth of the world in the near-death process, and learn that the moral standards that were handed down from the ancient moral teachings carry a lot of weight. Do you still have the nerve to wave your fist at the world?
But there is, after all, a way to come to terms with this problem that threatens to weigh us down with gloomy and fearful anticipations of almost Dickensian proportions. And it is one that may come as a surprise almost too good to be believed. For the incontestable fact is, in these life reviews, justice is seemingly always tempered by a kind of mercy that allows most of us to re-experience our lives without teeth-gnashing anguish and remorse.
There is never any condemnation — you are not judged.
You are in the presence of a being who loves you unconditionally.
You are treated with total compassion.
You are already forgiven.
You are only asked to look at your life, and to understand.
Although the life review may be the price you pay for entrance into the Light, the presence within the Light helps you through it with the greatest and most tender compassion and love and, even at times, humor. You are not being punished; you are being shown, so that you can learn.
Just to illustrate the benignity of this process, let this one example speak for many that might be cited. A man who had quite a hard time looking at his life during his review commented:
I feel strongly that the whole life review would have been emotionally destructive … if it hadn’t been for the fact that my friend [the being of light] and my friend’s friends, while we watched the whole thing, were loving me. I could feel that love. Every time I got a little upset, they turned it off for awhile and they just loved me. Their love was tangible. You could feel it on your body, you could feel it inside of you; their love went right through you. The therapy was their love, because my life review just kept tearing me down. It was pitiful to watch, just pitiful … it was nauseating. But through it all was their love.
Finally, just to show how knowledge of these experiences can actually affect one’s conduct in everyday life, let me conclude by citing a letter that was sent to me by a friend named Judy who was previously familiar with and had thought about the lessons stemming from these life reviews. In her letter, she described this incident to me:
One evening, a friend, two recently acquired acquaintances and I met at a restaurant. The four of us found ourselves sitting at a table in such a way that no general conversation inclusive of all of us could be held — and the decibel level in the crowded room also precluded that. The physical arrangement was such that a woman named Michelle was seated to the far left; my friend, Jim, was immediately to her right; I was positioned next to Jim; and another woman, Kathleen, was on the far right-hand side of the table.
Jim and I were eager to talk with Michelle because we were very interested in her work and knew we would not have a chance to see her again for a long time since she was soon to go to Europe for an extended period. However, a four-way conversation being impossible under the circumstances, I gradually gave up trying to chime in, especially since I had become aware that Kathleen seemed somewhat removed from the developing situation. It would have been difficult for her to participate, anyway, because Michelle, who is something of an “entertainer” and always “on,” quickly dominated the conversation. And it had already become apparent by now that Michelle and Kathleen had something of an antipathy toward each other.
Anyway, sure enough, Kathleen began to show signs of withdrawal, perhaps even resentment, and it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that she didn’t feel included. Later, Jim told me that he was vaguely aware of this at the time, but felt that the circumstances prevented him from doing much about it.
Judy, however, who was already keenly aware of the implications of the life review from her knowledge of the NDE literature, suddenly had a thought flash through her mind that changed everything.
I was feeling a bit frustrated about not being able to talk more with Michelle and having instead to make conversation with someone who didn’t seem to want to make any effort to engage and remained very distant. It is not easy for me to choose to be superficially social, though, just out of obligation, so this was a difficult predicament for me. Suddenly, the thought came, “How would I like to see this scene in my life review?” Immediately, I felt Kathleen’s pain, and the degree of that pain sent shudders through my body. I didn’t see my own life review per se, but rather I felt Kathleen’s life inside of me, almost as if I were experiencing it myself, particularly the immense amount of rejection she had felt most of her life (which she later confirmed for me) and how distancing herself had become a protective device for her against further pain.
After this insight had hit Judy like a thunderbolt, she says that… “feelings of empathy and compassion rose to the surface quite rapidly, accompanied by a genuine and strong sense of caring toward Kathleen. Without hesitation or hypocrisy, I turned — not just my head, but my entire body — toward her and gave her a very warm smile and began again to talk with her (although I knew within me that words wouldn’t even be necessary). She responded as though she had just been given the most loving hug, and we soon became engrossed in a conversation of our own.
As a result, not only was the evening a success after all, but there now developed between Kathleen and me a very tender and genuine mutual affection, which has since ripened into a friendship. And I have truly felt, ever since, an unchanged and unconditional empathy toward her, as if I had been allowed to peek for just a brief moment through all the deceiving veils into the heart of another, thus receiving the full force of complete understanding that comes from truly walking in someone else’s shoes. “To truly know someone is to love them,” I remember reading somewhere, and I can tell you that was shown to me that evening, incontestably.
All this, it would seem, simply because Judy had consciously used her knowledge of the life review to behave as she would have wished to see herself in her own life review. This example makes plain the thesis of this article and of my book: The lessons of the life review are available to everyone, whether one has had an NDE or not. All that is necessary is not to forget what you have learned, and to act upon your knowledge.
Lesson 1
The absolutely only thing that matters is love. Everything else, our achievements, degrees, the money we made, how many mink coats we had, is totally irrelevant. It will also be understood that what we do is not important. The only thing that matters is how we do what we do. And the only thing that matters is that we do what we do with love.
Lesson 2
I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing.
Lesson 2
Above and beyond anything else, we must first learn to love ourselves non-judgmentally and unconditionally. Then we will actually love all people and all things the same way.
Lesson 3
I saw myself [in a life review] perform an act of kindness, just a simple act of unselfishness, and I saw the ripples go out again. The friend I had been kind to was kind in turn to one of her friends, and the chain repeated itself. I saw love and happiness increase in others’ lives because of that one simple act on my part. I saw their happiness grow and affect their lives in positive ways, some significantly.
Lesson 4
What counts is what comes from the heart, …
Lesson 5
When I asked what a person should do while on Earth to make it better for him when he dies, he answered, “All you can do is to develop along the lines of unselfish love. People don’t come here because of their good deeds, or because they believe in this or that, but because they fit in and belong. Good deeds are the natural result of being good, and bad deeds are the natural result of being bad. Each carries its own reward and punishment. It’s what you are that counts!”
Overall Message
From all of the death experiences I have read, I had noticed that there was one underlying message being projected from those individuals who had died and experienced a higher aspect of Reality. The most common realization that NDE experiencers are given by their spirit guides and other helpful forms of Consciousness is one centered around Unconditional Love. Over and over, this message is repeated by these individuals. The message is that we must replace anger with love, learn to love more, learn to forgive and love everyone unconditionally, and learn that we are in return, loved. This seems like a common sense type of thing to do. However, do we always follow such a simple path? If these concepts and ideas are ingrained without our psyche, then we will be able to manifest a social transformation, through the power of interconnected consciousness. Let us learn to live to love.